In this difficult time, we're striving to keep our community connected, educated, and entertained. That's why we're kicking off our first ever series of online events: TLM Online. First up is Tenderloin Times: Sharing Local News Across Time in collaboration with Shaping San Francisco.
Celebrating the Tenderloin Times, a neighborhood newspaper which ran from 1977-1994, former editors, reporters, and photojournalists will reconvene via Zoom to discuss its history, as well as its ongoing digitization as part of the Neighborhood Newspapers of San Francisco, a public access online archive.
A collaborative effort of the San Francisco Department of Memory and housed at the Internet Archive, this collection contains over 2,260 issues of local monthlies dating back to the 1950s that have been made freely and widely accessible online. The Tenderloin Times was the first newspaper collection to be completed in the effort to digitally preserve and promote San Francisco community newspapers.
On April 9, former Tenderloin Times editors Rob Waters and Sara Colm will join Neighborhood Newspapers of San Francisco collection project manager LisaRuth Elliott in sharing some of the stories of the Tenderloin as taken from its pages. Reporter Dennis Conkin will include insights about a lifetime in community journalism, and photographer Lance Woodruff will reflect on photojournalism and his current role teaching history to youth. San Francisco History Center Historical Photograph Collection manager Christina Moretta will showcase a selection of the newly digitized archive of black and white original photographs used for the publication.
***Zoom link will be emailed to those that register.***
BIOS:
LisaRuth Elliott, a historian, editor, archivist, and visual artist, is the codirector of Shaping San Francisco, and the project manager of the Neighborhood Newspapers of San Francisco collection. She and her team of volunteers with the San Francisco Department of Memory have digitized over 2,260 neighborhood newspapers since 2013.
Christina Moretta is Photo Curator at the San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library. Notwithstanding the specificity of her job title, she wears many professional hats: that of an archivist, appraising, acquiring, arranging, and describing archival collections; that of a librarian, unraveling the mysteries of San Francisco just a bit more with each reference query; and that of a teacher, sharing the world of primary resources to students of all levels and disciplines. Her workplace serves as the official archives for the City & County of San Francisco, and its San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection has over two million visual materials items documenting San Francisco and the Bay Area.
Sara Colm is a journalist, human rights researcher, and community historian. She lived in Cambodia for 19 years, where she was the founding editor of the Phnom Penh Post and later led Human Rights Watch’s work on Cambodia and Vietnam. Prior to that, she worked as a community organizer in the Tenderloin and then editor of the award-winning Tenderloin Times newspaper. More recently she has led workshops for Tenderloin residents in how to use mobile phones to make short documentary films. She co-curated exhibitions at the SF Jewish Community Center and Tenderloin Museum chronicling Tenderloin history and arts through the lens of the Tenderloin Times. She is author of Repression of Montagnards: Conflicts Over Land and Religion in Vietnam’s Central Highlands (2002). She now lives in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains with her husband and their canine companion, Ruby.
Rob Waters is an award-winning journalist and editorial consultant who focuses on health, mental health, science and education. His articles have appeared in Health Affairs, Politico, the Washington Post, BusinessWeek, San Francisco magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, Salon.com, the LA Times, Kaiser Health News, EdSource and many other publications. He covered health, science and west coast biotech for Bloomberg News, was a staff writer at Time Inc. Health, and editor of the Tenderloin Times, a four-language San Francisco community newspaper.
As a researcher, writer, and teacher in Philadelphia—America’s historic crossroad of revolution and democracy—Lance Woodruff focuses on history, religion, and society in hope for the future. As a photographer he is drawn to making deep portraits of women and men from all walks of life, belief, and being, and documenting life as he experiences it.
*This program is part of TLM Online, the Tenderloin Museum's new series of digital programs designed to inform, educate, and entertain our community during lockdown.